Gruesome stash: Dr Michael Berkland, a former medical examiner, kept human brains, lungs, hearts and tissue in a storage unit in Florida for years
A former medical examiner stashed human brains, hearts and lungs from more than 100 people in soda cups and food containers inside a storage unit, authorities have said.
The remains, which included tissue samples and 10 brains, were found in a unit in Pensacola, Florida that had previously been rented by Dr. Michael Berkland.
A man made the grisly discovery when he bought the contents of the unit at an auction last week after Berkland stopped paying his rent – but he immediately called police after opening its doors to a pungent smell.
Investigators found formaldehyde, which is used to preserve bodies, leaking from a 32-ounce drink cup with a cracked lid – and opened it to find a human heart inside.
No charges have been filed against Berkland but officials are trying to determine if he broke any laws regarding biomedical waste and the storing and disposing of human remains.
Medical Examiner Dr. Andi Minyard told the Pensacola News Journal the remains appear to be from private autopsies Berkland performed at local funeral homes between 1997 and 2007.
‘It’s a horrible thing to know that your uncle’s brain is sitting in some storage shed that got sold at an auction,’ Dr. Minyard said.
Berkland worked at the medical examiner’s office from 1997 until 2003, when he was fired for failing to complete autopsy reports. He also conducted private autopsies in the area.

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Jeff Martin, director of the Medical Examiner’s Office, added: ‘How horrible it is for the families of these deceased to think that someone’s loved one’s organs are basically rotting away in a storage unit somewhere.’
The medical examiner’s office is now cross-referencing names in their database during that time period to try to locate exactly where the organs came from, Martin said.

Scene: The organs were discovered when Berkland’s unit at Unlce Bob’s Self Storage, pictured, was auctioned off. The new renter noticed a pungent smell inside and called authorities
Minyard added there is a good chance that none of remains are from cases that Berkland handled as a medical examiner as the numbering system he used was not the same as their office.
Officials are also trying to find relatives of the victims, but admit they could struggle.

‘It’s a horrible thing to know that your uncle’s brain is sitting in some storage shed that got sold at an auction’
Dr. Andi Minyard, medical examiner
‘The unfortunate thing is several of the tissue buckets and several of the brains don’t have any labels on them at all, so we have no idea who they would have belonged to,’ she said.
It is not known why Berkland was storing the organs there; Martin said it is unlikely he was selling them as they were so crudely preserved.
Some were in Tupperware containers and ‘a lot of those containers were emptied because they had cracked through so all of those caustic chemicals were leaking out somewhere,’ Martin said.
Uncle Bob’s Self Storage, the company that runs the unit, said Berkland claimed he would use the space to keep household goods and office furniture there.
‘We never had any indication that anything was out of the ordinary, nor did anyone on our management team ever notice anything amiss during daily property checks,’ Diane Piegza, vice president of corporate communications, said.

Unsettling: The organs had been stored in formaldehyde solution, as seen in this file picture, but in many cases it had leaked out of the food containers. Officals are now trying to identify the victims
State Attorney Bill Eddins added: ‘We’re in the process of reviewing the facts and researching the law to determine whether a crime has been committed. We do intend to talk to Dr. Berkland – it is my belief he is still local – and learn his reasons for keeping body parts there.’
Florida was not the only place Berkland ran into trouble over his work. In 1996, he was fired as a contract medical examiner in Jackson County, Missouri, in a dispute over his autopsy reports.
Berkland had incorrectly stated on the reports that he had taken sections of several brains to be preserved as specimens for medical conferences and teaching purposes, AP reported.
He claimed they were ‘proofreading errors’ and the Missouri attorney general’s office found they did not jeopardize any criminal cases.
Berkland complained the actions against him were unfair because he was unable to present evidence in his defense. His doctor’s license was ultimately revoked there.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2194863/Dr-Michael-Berkland-Medical-examiner-stashed-hearts-brains-lungs-storage-unit.html#ixzz24u6cyLoH

A Chinhoyi mother-in-law helped her 20-year-old nephew rape her daughter-in-law (27) as punishment for the latter’s refusal to consult a sangoma over her husband’s ill-health.

The court heard the incident occurred at a farming plot near Chinhoyi on March 16 last year.

State counsel Farai Zachariah told the court that a misunderstanding arose between the complainant and her mother-in-law after the former refused to consult a sangoma over her husband’s chronic illness, citing her Christian beliefs.

This irked her mother-in-law who immediately teamed up with her nephew and tied the complainant’s hands and legs and dragged her to a secluded place outside the homestead.

The man raped the complainant, while the woman kept guard. The complainant later managed to untie herself and escaped before reporting the matter to police.

In aggravation, the prosecutor told the court that the rape had traumatised and undermined complainant’s dignity and privacy.

The rapist was sentenced to six years in jail last Friday by Chinhoyi magistrate Solomon Jenya.

The court is yet to pass a verdict on the mother-in-law.

Bulawayo24

Building on Sand
by Cara Hanson

Isaiah 51:15
For I am the LORD your God, who churns up the sea so that its waves roar—the LORD Almighty is his name.

It was a perfect beach day. The sun was warming our skin just enough to make us feel like melted butter dripping down corn on the cob. The cool ocean wind unfurled our hair, now raised flags wildly whipping in the salty air. Seagulls soared against the blue canvas, screeching out their melancholy song to remind us that we were buffeted from the chaos of the civilized world. I closed my eyes and sank deeper into my relaxing bath of sand. And then the screaming began. No, it wasn’t a swimmer in jeopardy, calling out desperate pleas for help to the shore. It was my children.

All of that stuff at the beginning was a romantic notion of the beach, which I still cling to while trying to adjust to bringing three small children to my former peaceful sanctuary. I used to have just a few items to bring with me: towel, sunscreen, books, and water bottle. Once you have kids, it would be easier if you could just transfer the entire beach to your backyard. After packing shovels, buckets, sunglasses, towels, sweatshirts, snacks, and other essentials, I think we actually bring more to the beach than we leave at home. But we somehow make up for that by bringing half of the beach home and tracking it through the house. God told Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the sand on the seashore, [1] and if you need a visual aid, simply come look at our floors during the summertime.

I used to be able to sleep on the beach for hours, only waking up when the tide came in and tickled my feet with its curled fingers. Now that I’m forced to stay awake, I’ve noticed that the beach provides us with many biblical lessons. Besides, who has time to relax on the beach when there are sandcastles to build? Building a sandcastle is the best way to understand the words of Jesus as he described the building techniques of the wise man and the foolish man in the gospel of Matthew.

Matthew 7:24-27
(24) “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
(25) The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.
(26) But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.
(27) The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

Even the best sandcastle in the world will eventually be demolished by the rising tide. Younger children especially are not amused when their hard work of building a sandcastle goes sailing out to sea. They rant and rave, often at the ocean, as though its waves were evil thieves who snuck into shore, clutched the castles with soggy arms, and stole away into the abyss, forever unpunished for their misdeeds. People who do not put the words of Jesus into action are often just as surprised when their lives start crumbling down around them. Perhaps we need to spend more time building sandcastles, if only to understand what our Lord was trying to tell us.

The concept of building a castle out of sand seems outlandish. The countryside of Europe is still dotted with majestic castles that are centuries old, thanks to their solid rock foundations. Their perpetual beauty seems in stark contrast with the modern world changing around them (what could be more incongruous than a fast food restaurant next door to a medieval castle?). But these castles endure because they were built on rock. Yet, people spend hours laboring to build castles—the largest of all houses—out of sand, which will only be swept out to sea. I guess people would feel silly saying, “Let’s go build a sand-shack.” So to save face, parents everywhere are forced into an unofficial contest to see who can labor more in vain to build the biggest and best castle—made of sand.

1 Corinthians 15:58
Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

Our kids were content with their small pails and shovels until another family arrived with enough equipment to build an actual Swiss chalet. My siblings and I used to build sandcastles with our bare hands, but that was irrelevant at this point, now that the Swiss Family Robinson had apparently showed up to throw down a challenge. Nevertheless, I deftly demonstrated to our children that if you pack down the damp sand very firmly in the pail and tip it over very carefully, you will have…a pile of mud that does not even remotely resemble a castle. But hey, if you stick a flag at the top, it looks like…a pile of mud with a flag at the top. The kids couldn’t even hide their disgust at our disappointing piece of sandy real estate. Meanwhile, our new “neighbors” were loudly and rather obnoxiously rubbing in the fact that their chalet was making our “castle” look more like an ant hill.

Suddenly, God decided to provide me with yet another biblical lesson, as He drowned out their antics with His voice.

Psalm 93:3 and 4
(3) The seas have lifted up, O LORD, the seas have lifted up their voice; the seas have lifted up their pounding waves.
(4) Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, mightier than the breakers of the sea—the LORD on high is mighty.

Psalm 29:3 and 4
(3) The voice of the LORD is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the LORD thunders over the mighty waters.
(4) The voice of the LORD is powerful; the voice of the LORD is majestic.

What was that awesome noise? The waves were rolling in like thunder, and in them I heard the majesty and power of God Almighty! The tide was starting to come in, and everyone was in a rush to save their creations. Dig a moat! Come on, hurry! Oh, how could we be so foolish to think we could deceive the boundary of the sea? A foundation of sand? Doesn’t the sea have a right to take back what is rightly its own?

Jeremiah 5:22
Should you not fear me?” declares the LORD. “Should you not tremble in my presence? I made the sand a boundary for the sea, an everlasting barrier it cannot cross. The waves may roll, but they cannot prevail; they may roar, but they cannot cross it.

After all that hard work, the sea came bursting through its doors, rushed in, and in its uncontained excitement wiped out the whole “neighborhood,” moats and all. In an instant, I realized that the size and quality of the houses did not matter; without a solid foundation they were both completely obliterated.

When lives are built on anything other than The Cornerstone, Jesus Christ, the labor is in vain. It’s like putting suntan lotion on children before they play in the sand. They roll in the sand and come out looking like graham cracker pie crusts. Then the sand gets in the food, and you can’t just pretend it’s some organic granola. You go in the water to wash it off, and as soon as you emerge, you’re a walking mud pie. Why is it that we can understand the futility of this phenomenon, but sometimes we don’t get it when we disobey the Lord and our lives collapse like a dilapidated sandcastle?

Jesus certainly spent a lot of time around water and boats, so I like to think that he was a beach lover, just like me. Even though he would not have had the sand sculpting tools of today, it is possible that he experimented with the qualities of sand the old fashioned way, by hands-on experience. With all of the times that he was by the water, I can imagine him sometimes turning his weary face into the breeze, inhaling the moist air, and stooping down to draw his fingers through the gritty sand of the shore. Perhaps at some point, he even packed down the damp sand very firmly in a bucket, tipped it over very carefully, and discovered…a pile of mud that did not even remotely resemble a castle. I daresay that even if Jesus had built a sandcastle, it eventually would have been destroyed. But a smile would have cracked on his sun-kissed face, during the enlightening moment as his sandy creation was washed away, and his heavenly Father revealed the importance of a solid foundation.

EST OAK LANE – August 28, 2012 – Philadelphia Police are investigating a deadly shooting in West Oak Lane.

It happened around 3:00 p.m. Tuesday in the 7400 block of Limekiln Pike.

Police say a man was shot and killed outside a place called Flat, a Jamaican restaurant and speakeasy.

It was sometime after 3:00 p.m.when witnesses heard multiple gunshots coming from the rear of the parking lot.
Police say witnesses saw three men running from the area. Their identities and whereabouts are unknown.

When officers arrived, they found a 36-year-old man lying on the ground with multiple gunshot wounds, he was

was later pronounced dead on the scene by paramedics.

Residents say there have been a number of shootings at this location over the years, some of them deadly.

The victim’s identity has not been released. Residents say he was a Jamaican immigrant who had recently returned from a trip to Jamaica.

Simon/Simmy, killed at Poker Flats in Philadelphia today. Condolences to the family

IT’S a girl for dancehall diva Ce’Cile.
The baby arrived a week ahead of schedule and for the time being is being referred to as “Baby”.
Mother is doing fine. No comment yet from dad, Chris Martin.